Chuck is the author of the published novels: Blackbirds, Mockingbird, Under the Empyrean Sky, Blue Blazes, Double Dead, Bait Dog,Dinocalypse Now, Beyond Dinocalypse and Gods & Monsters: Unclean Spirits. He also the author of the soon-to-be-published novels: The Cormorant, Blightborn (Heartland Book #2), Heartland Book #3, Dinocalypse Forever, Frack You, and The Hellsblood Bride. Also coming soon is his compilation book of writing advice from this very blog: The Kick-Ass Writer, coming from Writers Digest.

He, along with writing partner Lance Weiler, is an alum of the Sundance Film Festival Screenwriter’s Lab (2010). Their short film, Pandemic, showed at the Sundance Film Festival 2011, and their feature film HiM is in development with producers Ted Hope and Anne Carey. Together they co-wrote the digital transmedia drama Collapsus, which was nominated for an International Digital Emmy and a Games 4 Change award.

Chuck has contributed over two million words to the game industry, and was the developer of the popular Hunter: The Vigil game line (White Wolf Game Studios / CCP). He was a frequent contributor to The Escapist, writing about games and pop culture.

Much of his writing advice has been collected in various writing- and storytelling-related e-books.

He currently lives in the forests of Pennsyltucky with wife, two dogs, and tiny human.

He is likely drunk and untrustworthy. This blog is NSFW and probably NSFL.

Chuck Wendig is a novelist, screenwriter, and game designer. This is his blog. He talks a lot about writing. And food. And pop culture. And his kid. He uses lots of naughty language. NSFW. Probably NSFL. Be advised.

The Victimization Of Lara Croft

I was hopeful. I saw the new take on Lara Croft way back when and thought, well, color me intrigued. The old Lara Croft never really spoke to me — comic book proportions, sassy British accent, short-shorts, whatever. No harm, no foul, but not the game for me. And then along comes this new reimagining — Lara Croft by way of John McClane. A rougher, tougher hero — kicked around but triumphant.

“When people play Lara, they don’t really project themselves into the character,” Rosenberg told me at E3 last week when I asked if it was difficult to develop for a female protagonist.

“They’re more like ‘I want to protect her.’ There’s this sort of dynamic of ‘I’m going to this adventure with her and trying to protect her.'”

So is she still the hero? I asked Rosenberg if we should expect to look at Lara a little bit differently than we have in the past.

“She’s definitely the hero but— you’re kind of like her helper,” he said. “When you see her have to face these challenges, you start to root for her in a way that you might not root for a male character.”

Well, sure. Because who could possibly relate to a — snerk, gasp — female protagonist? Better instead to assume that we’re just helping the poor dear along. Because if we don’t, well…

In the new Tomb Raider, Lara Croft will suffer. Her best friend will be kidnapped. She’ll get taken prisoner by island scavengers. And then, Rosenberg says, those scavengers will try to rape her.

“She is literally turned into a cornered animal,” Rosenberg said. “It’s a huge step in her evolution: she’s forced to either fight back or die.”

Ah! See, there it is. If we don’t act as her helper, we’ll “help” her get raped.

Aaaaaand then killed.

As a storyteller, this is troubling on a number of levels — that we humanize a female character by making her weak, by forcing her into the role of the victim. I’m not saying there’s not a mode for a story where a woman fights off brutal male attackers and triumphs against them. There is. I’m also not sure that Tomb Raider is it. Especially since we had a character who was shallow, yes, but she was also a wealthy confident ass-kicker who brooked no bullshit. She wasn’t a potential sexual bullseye for a bunch of island thugs. Is this our current idea of a strong female character? A bloodied victim? An abused teen girl? Is there no middle-ground between “super-bazoomed comic book heiress” and “survivor of torture porn island adventure?” Can’t we scuff her up but keep the rape out of it? And can’t we come to her being a strong relatable character not because she’s a woman, not despite the fact she’s a woman, but regardless of it?

As a human fucking being, this is troubling on one particular level: that all women can hope for is to get out alive and, y’know, unraped. We already approach rape in this culture like it’s a pothole in the road you need to avoid — as if the power to not get raped is solely in the hands of the woman. As if the onus of responsibility is not at all on the scum-fuck rapists. It always seems to be a message of How Not To Get Raped as opposed to How Not To Be A Shitty Fucking Rapist. Nobody’s saying women shouldn’t learn to be strong and protect themselves — but it’s not a woman’s responsibility not to get raped.

And yet, that’s what this Tomb Raider appears to be saying.

This doesn’t make her bad-ass.

It doesn’t make her or the situation “more real.”

(As if that’s what games like this need – a hard high dose of rapey reality.)

It doesn’t improve her or make her stronger.

It goes too far. It pushes too hard. It weakens her deeply.

We cannot “relate.” We need to “help” and “protect” her.

We turn her human by “literally” making her a “cornered animal?”

All this says some very scary things about how we look at women, I think.

(A caveat: this is based on this one article and some game footage. For all I know, the game will come out and not be this at all — but by all indications, we’re in for some trouble with this one.)

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82 comments

Sometimes the gaming industry really makes me wonder. As someone that has had men (try) to rape me in the past, their presumptuousness and ignorance is downright offensive. Making Lara like a “cornered animal” does not make her relateable. In fact, it fucking pisses me off. Make her relateable by adding more to her–show a softer side of her during an arc of the story–anything but, of all things, rape.

I would rant more but my spleen hurts and I don’t want my rage to somehow magically make it explode. Brb punching babies.

I find myself disturbed by the overall trend recently between Marvel Comics and now, Lara Croft, where women are not only diminished and exploited, but the creators see no purpose in even HAVING female characters unless there is a disturbing amount of sexual content involved.
Okay, I don’t have a problem with sex in writing, even if the character is reasonably promiscuous, but sex should not be their entire PURPOSE. I’ve been a geek for over 8 years, and this is the VERY FIRST time, I feel like as a woman, I’m being told by comic and game developers that “chicks serve no purpose as valid characters, but we’ll have them on if they’re hot and always getting laid/raped.” This is the first time I feel ashamed to be associated with comics. I find this deeply disappointing.
I really really hope they don’t go this route with Lara Croft.

ok setting aside the rape which is just stupid, You should be trying to protect lara croft for only one reason. She is not lara croft, heck this is her first trip anywhere’s she dont at lest i think she dont know anything AT all about survival period. In this game she learns to hunt, shoot? Kill, find treasure etc.

Now my hope is that by the half way point we dont need to hold her hand in fact it just the oppiste she is holding are hands and guiding us. For what i have heard you start off with quick time events BUT at a certain point when she learns that skill you no longer have to think about it.

Shooting a bow and arrow: start out quick time event as you master the bow no more quick time event. At lest from all the stuff i have seen that what they are doing although yes it hard to know what they are doing until we play it are self’s.

From what I’ve seen, that does seem to be the mechanic they’re going with. I don’t think anyone here is arguing that that would be bad. Hell, that would be freakin’ awesome. Quicktime events in which you slowly gain proficiency makes perfect sense in an origins story, but there’s one place where I disagree with you:

During video games, I never feel like I have to protect the character. This isn’t because they are or are not bad asses. That’s irrelevant. Turn the difficulty up high enough on any game and even the bad asses look less bad ass. No, just like in every story–book, movie, etc.–I feel like I AM the character.

When I play Infamous, I don’t feel like I’m protecting Cole as he figures out his lightning powers. I feel like I’M figuring out MY lightning powers. And there are morality and skill choices in that game which would probably be similar to the new Tomb Raider. However, nobody worried that we couldn’t connect with Cole, what with him being a dude and all.

This guy appears to think that since we can’t connect with Lara Croft, because she’s always been portrayed as a really bad ass blow up doll, the next best thing is to want to protect her. No. I don’t want to do that. I want to become her, to live in her mind, to see her choices and experience the game WITH her, not as an outside observer. If we don’t connect with her because as a character she lacks substance, that’s not our fault; it’s theirs. They need to go back and figure out how they can rework the character to get me to care. That’s just called good story telling. But substituting in some bizarre maternal/paternal protection aspect is not the way to do it.

I wrote on the topic of using rape in fiction on my blog. These were my thoughts:

As far as using rape in fiction? Of course it can be used. It is a part of life, a part of history and a valid topic for exploration. SHOULD you use it? I think you need to ask yourself the following questions:

*Can the power dynamics at play in my plot be served by any other means?
*Would I play this scene differently if my character were bigger/stronger/differently gendered
*Am I using the rape as sexual titillation in a non-sexual fantasy scenario?
*Are the visuals correctly describing rape as about power and control, not sex?
*Am I dealing with the aftermath of rape for the victim where appropriate?

I don’t get the feeling that the game designers asked themselves any of these questions.

I mean, everything can’t be the same. Maybe there is room for a game where a heroine must confront the possibility of rape and do something about it. I mean, this can actually happen. Maybe this can be that game that has that type of reality, I suppose.

That said…Why can’t we also make a game like the Uncharted series, with a character just like Nathan Drake, but a woman (which Tomb Raider has the potential to be). And we leave out the rape. Can we do that?

I’m okay with a game that puts a female protagonist in a corner and ruffing her up and even threatening her with rape, if we can also have a game where she’s the adventurer heroine and rape never even crosses anyones mind like how no one considers putting Nathan Drake in a situation where he might be rapes (that’s real too, you know. Men get raped too, yet I doubt anyone would even consider putting that in a game, so can we also do the same with a female action/adventure game?).

I’m fine with this as long as it’s not the only thing we get when it comes to the female treasure hunter protagonist. I still think there’s room for evolution but in a different direction.

Has this guy ever met a Tomb Raider player? I mean, is he JOKING? Lara Croft was NEVER meant to be a damsel in distress that we are supposed to want to “protect.” I am absolutely horrified that this misogynist jerk is going to take our best female protagonist and essentially turn her into the princess from Donkey Kong. Also… attempted rape? Never fun or entertaining. Not in real life, not in gaming. Ever. No exceptions. This is the first time since the original Tomb Raider came out that I will not buy the newest game. Instead, I’ll mourn the Lara I’ve PROJECTED MYSELF into all these years, and start looking for another strong female character-driven game.

I really appreciate this post for broaching such a serious and dark topic as rape, even if it means being critical to what I’m guessing is a popular thing. Clearly I know nothing about video games. Anyway.

I did notice one line though: “Can’t we scuff her up but keep the rape out of it?” I have seen this a lot in books and I have a problem with it. Like there’ll be a woman who’s gorgeous and also happens to get captured by enemies and kept for days, months, once I saw a year. And never raped. Starved, maybe beaten, by a bunch of horny guys who make lewd gestures and comments… but never raped.

Really?

And okay, I’m sure this does happen, but when I see it as a pattern, then I read that as: “rape would be too difficult for me to deal with and so let’s pretend it didn’t happen even though we all know IT DID.” And that’s I’m not okay with. That’s sweeping it under the rug and it doesn’t help anyone in the long run.

However, is a video game the place to properly analyze her psychological reaction to rape (or ATTEMPTED RAPE, which still has serious and lasting repercussions, by the way)… well, probably not.

“Nobody’s saying women shouldn’t learn to be strong and protect themselves — but it’s not a woman’s responsibility not to get raped.”

Yes. This. I’ve seen it said in various places online that women shouldn’t be told to protect themselves because the onus should be placed on the men who rape. While some of that is true, in the world we live in, women should know how to defend themselves to some extent. Women bear none of the blame, but it’s smart to know what to do if they ever find themselves in such a situation.

I do appreciate Amber’s comment about the reality of rape as portrayed in books (especially in some of the romance novels I’ve read). It happens, so if you’re putting your character in a situation where this is a big possibility, most times it should be addressed, or a reason given for it not being an issue. It’s the opposite end of the spectrum, where we’d rather not talk about such a terrible thing, and so women might be underprepared, or at least unaware that it is a reality she could face at some point in her life. Then later blame herself or feel ashamed that such a thing did happen.

But props to you, Chuck, for tackling the issue in a thoughtful and reasonable way.

Indeed it kind of was. But it doesn’t make sense that after all those years’ of having huge boobs, she all of a sduedn has normal’ ones. Not that I care much, but it does kind of make her another person. Her face is different as well and it looks like a fucking anime. Old tomb raider was awesome and I don’t get how you would﻿ like this if you don’t like old’ tomb raider. Is it just about the way it looks then? What sucks about old tomb raider anyway?GD Star Ratingloading…GD Star Ratingloading…